Disney May Impose a 28-Day Wait on DVD Rental Services

5:48 PM PST 2/7/2012 by Paul Bond

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Chief Executive Bob Iger says "Redbox and a lot of these services" will have to adhere to a new window or get their DVDs elsewhere.

Disney may impose a 28-day window on services that rent DVDs, a policy similar to those that other studios have already adopted, CEO Bob Iger told analysts on Tuesday.

Iger said during the question-and-answer period on a conference call to discuss quarterly earnings that Disney's studio hadn't imposed a delay on the likes of Redbox before because "it was not seeing any effect from these dollar-rentals on their sell-through business."

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Soft DVD sales, though, were cited as a reason Tuesday for Disney's studio entertainment segment reporting a 16 percent dip in revenue in its first fiscal quarter.

Fox, Universal and NBCUniversal already impose a 28-day window on Redbox and Netflix while Warner Bros. said last month it will switch to a 56-day delay.

Disney did not respond to requests for details, including whether or not Netflix would be included in such a delay.

Referring to "Redbox and a lot of these services," Iger said: "We are in discussions to go to the 28-day window -- to not sell directly our physical goods to these entities unless they adhere to a 28-day window."

The studio, Iger said Tuesday, "decided to take a step in the direction of further protecting the initial window of the sell-through."